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Time's Jay Carney is leaving the magazine to work for Joe Biden. Carney's title will be assistant to the vice president and director of communications.
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Jay Carney is leaving Time magazine after 20 years to be Vice President-elect Joe Biden's communications director in the White House, astonished magazine and gleeful transition sources said.

Carney's title will be assistant to the vice president and director of communications. TIME.com's "The Page" first reported his new job.

Carney, the magazine's Washington bureau chief, is one of Washington's best-known talking heads, with regular appearances on ABC's "This Week," "The McLaughlin Group" and MSNBC's "Hardball."

Biden has assembled a team of heavyweights: Ron Klain, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Al Gore, as chief of staff; Mike Donilon, one of Washington's best-connected Democratic consultants, as counselor; and Tony Blinken, a longtime Biden adviser, who is expected to fill a senior role on the National Security Council or on Biden's staff.

A Democratic official close to the selection process said Carney had already decided to do something different after the election, and Biden advisers believed Carney would bring "a fresh perspective" to their deliberations.

"It's an adventure," the official said. "Everybody thought it was an interesting idea and worth the risk. You never know how guys in your business are going to do in politics or the private sector."

The official added: "There are those on the right who will see this as the embodiment of their assertions about the media and Obama, and this is just making it official."

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Carney, a Yale graduate, is known as a middle-of-the-road, well-connected journalist with establishment instincts. But back in 2000, he closely covered the guerilla presidential odyssey of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Carney and his wife, Claire Shipman, the senior Washington correspondent for ABC's "Good Morning America," have two children — a son, Hugo, and daughter, Della.

This is the second member of the media elite who has signed on with Obama's administration. ABC News correspondent Linda Douglass joined the campaign as traveling spokeswoman, and now is working for Obama's Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Officials said the conversations with Carney arose in part from his friendship with Blinken.

Carney telephoned members of his staff individually on Sunday night to tell them he was leaving the magazine.

Managing Editor Richard Stengel announced Carney's departure in a staff-wide memo on Monday morning, but did not say what he was doing.

Stengel said in the memo, which was obtained by Politico's Michael Calderone: "After twenty extraordinary years at TIME, Jay Carney is moving on to a new challenge. Jay has been pretty much everywhere for us. He started as Miami bureau chief and then became a correspondent in Moscow before landing in Washington and eventually becoming bureau chief. He was in Havana when Mikhail Gorbachev first visited in 1989; he was on the first plane of journalists into Panama for the U.S. invasion that same year; in 1991, he was at the television tower in Vilnius, Lithuania, when Soviet tanks rolled in, and in Red Square when they rolled again during the failed coup that led to the Soviet Union’s demise. On 9/11, he was aboard Air Force One with President Bush.

"He had two stints covering the White House and excelled in his coverage of the McCain 2000 campaign and of the Clinton impeachment. As a reporter and as bureau chief, he always fought for fairness and balance in our coverage whether it was of the left or the right. He is a superb journalist, an exemplary bureau chief and he also happens to be one of the pleasantest and most decent guys in our business. We wish him well in his new endeavors, which we will hear about shortly."

Before becoming bureau chief in 2005, Carney was White House correspondent and deputy bureau chief. His byline in the magazine was "James Carney," in deference to his mother.

From his Time bio: "Before coming to Washington in 1993 to report on the Clinton White House, he served as a correspondent in TIME's Moscow Bureau for three years, covering the collapse of the Soviet Union. Prior to that he was TIME's Miami bureau chief. Carney has also served as a special correspondent for CNN ... A native Virginian, Carney earned a B.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Yale University in 1987."

Readers' Comments (150)

I think that Jay will be a GREAT Communications Chief for VPOTUS Biden.....They are both GOOD Men and will do the job that is necessary for the American Public.......GOOD PICK BIDEN!!!......All of those SOUR GRAPES people out there who want to dis Obama and Biden, saying such things that Biden is a 'Gaff Machine' simpily do not know what they are talking about!!!.......And that Biden is going to be relegated to the cellar, do not know what they are talking about......At EVERY PRESS CONFERENCE THERE IS BIDEN STANDING TO THE RIGHT OF PREZ ELECT OBAMA........'YOU GO JOE!!!'

but of course, he was completely neutral and detached in his reporting prior to becoming a biden flak. that's the great thing about mainstream journalists. they may vote democratic. they may work for democratic politicians. But because they are professionals, they are also completely objective in their reportage. lol.

This guy helped destroy Time mag with his left wing bias and then gets selected to become the Veeps communications chief. Such hypocrisy from the left. Why does the VP need a communications chief when everytime he can be, he is in front of cameras putting his big, dumb foot in his mouth.

Careful there Bub. Walking around with blinders on like that can cause accidents. PS. All caps is not necessary. Makes you look like an angry liberal. I'm sure you're not, just like I'm not quaffing from the cup of sour grapes wine.

It appears to me that Mr. Carney was tired of working for a living and has decided to do nothing for at least 4 years. Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama have decided that the VP will due nothing but attend funerals. With the make up of the present Senate, he doesn't have to break tie votes. Maybe Mr. Carney will like editing the obits and golfing.

Carney is just finding another way of getting paid to root for Democrats. What passed for "journalism" practiced by Time magazine in general and Carney in particular was nothing but Bush-bashing and Obama foot-kissing. As for the comparison between what Carney is doing and the late Tony Snow's move from Fox News Channel to the Bush White House, Snow always acknowledged that he was a conservative. Carney always claimed to be unbiased, which was a lie. There's a difference, folks.

Mr. Carney may be a nice guy but this is just another example of MSM bias. Would he ever have worked in a republican white house? Would any of them? How many days will it be before the MSM becomes "the opposition party" like they do for republicans? Obama wa going to win anyway but they just gave him a free pass. Fight back. I have done it by boycotting t.v. news. Find your own way.

Jay Carney has been working for the Demorats for 20 years only now it's official. I can remember when one of McCains staff questioned the need to go through the MSM on Morning Joe and this hack got all indignant with her,I guess she knew what she was talking about.

Biden who is scheduled to wind down the activities of the Vice Presidents office to the classical duties of attending funerals gets a long time friend into a cushy job with bucks but no real work scheduled. That is until Biden, opens his mouth and says something rash as he is wont to do. Time, like other magazines is a shell of its former self and headed to the BK courts.

Joe is married to Claire Shipman-D at ABC who will now get pillow talk to help her increase her marketability with praise for Joe Biden!

What a shocker! A journalist going to work for a Democrat. And there are still people out there ignorant enough to deny the media liberal bias. I wonder who would be president-elect if we had fair elections and journalists who didn't have an agenda. With thousands of cheerleaders in the media, Democrats are hard to beat. Eventually, with all of the inbreeding, Washington will be another Chicago.